Don’t be fooled by the sunny looking photo you see above, as this past weekend was a cold and windy endeavor. Windy enough, in fact, to be considered almost unfishable…almost. I decided to hit the Middle Provo below the damn and arrived to an impressive crowd of anglers, but within an hour the bitter cold wind had driven everyone away and I felt like I was the only person left. I don’t generally let weather conditions affect my enthusiasm for fly fishing, but I’ll admit that the wind tested my will this day. At one point, I got tangled so bad that I had to clip off my entire rig and start over, trying my best not to let the swear words fly while doing it. In the end, I was rewarded with a sudden lack of wind and a midge hatch for the final waning hour of the day. Definitely worth the wait.

The water flows are up quite a bit, but the water clarity is still good and run off hasn’t really begun in full force yet. I was able to catch a few fish in the afternoon while nymphing with a sow bug, but as mentioned above, it didn’t really heat up until the last hour of daylight. I feel sorry for all those sorry suckers who left before the sun started to fade.

One of my favorite things to witness on the river is when a huge bird of prey dives into the water to catch a fish. I snapped a picture of the osprey pictured above, just moments before such an event. Ironically, this seems to mostly happen on days when I can’t buy a fish and have decided there must be no fish left. Such was the case today when this particular osprey dove into the water a few feet away and emerged with a nice catch while I was struggling to make a cast in the wind. More proof that even on days when we can’t catch them, the fish are still all around us on the Provo, you just need to be an osprey to see them. For me, it’s a reminder that our perspective has a lot to do with our vantage point. Once again, the mighty osprey has taught a valuable lesson about life.